How To Be A Winning Bettor

Here's what you need to know to be successful with sports betting.

While many people tend to think this, sports betting is not based on random chance and the enormous scale of the sports betting industry means that you are no longer just competing against the sportsbook, but also other sports bettors all around the world. Similar to the stock market, sports betting has become a global marketplace, with an ever-growing group of people who are able to turn it into their full-time job. In order to be a winning sports bettor, you must be able to block out your emotions and look at things from a different perspective. In this article, we’ll provide you with some tips on how to be a winning sports bettor.

Odds Matter – A Lot

When speaking with novice sports bettors, the question that gets bounced around often is, “which team do you think will win?”. While casual fans will care about which team they think will win, experienced sports bettors focus on the outcomes that they think are more likely to happen than that implied by the betting odds. This means that although an individual may think that the team he’s about to bet on will likely lose, the fact that there’s value in placing this bet means that over the long run, this individual will likely profit if he’s able to stick with his strategy of picking value bets. It’s important to be able to sift out bets that are undervalued by the sportsbook. Sometimes, this will mean betting on the underdog and other times, this will mean betting on the favorite.

Bet With Your Head, Not Your Heart

Emotions and sports tend to go hand in hand. However, when it comes to sports betting, it’s crucial to be able to remove all emotions. Most people love betting for their country, their hometown, or their favorite sports teams. This strategy is less than ideal – if you want to succeed in the long run, I strongly suggest you pivot and change your strategy. Since sportsbooks know how people tend to bet with their emotions, you’ll often find popular teams getting extremely overvalued by sportsbooks. This means that the odds-on favorite to win the game might be chosen more due to popularity than what the sportsbook believes is their real chance of winning.

Invest In What You Know

As the legendary investor Warren Buffet once said, never invest in a business that you don’t understand. The same can be applied to the sports betting market. If you’re an expert on football and have been following it for basically you entire life, don’t change your focus to basketball if you’re completely new to the sport. Additionally, you shouldn’t be tempted to place a bet on high-profile games if you don’t really know anything about the two teams involved in the matchup. Although most of the money is wagered on high-profile games, sharp bettors tend to stick to bets within niche markets. As a result, you should consider betting on the less obvious sports (if you have good knowledge of this) and develop your unique expertise.

NFL-wide in 2018, play action presented the best increase in efficiency when used in a pass set (like 11 personnel) rather than in a run set.

Here’s a look at the offenses when in 11 personnel that used PA the most.

Big Picture

When individuals first start out in sports betting, they tend to conduct extremely detailed research on the statistics of individual players and teams. However, it’s important to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. People often place a lot of weight on minor factors that actually won’t have a big impact on the potential outcome of the game. Focus on the statistics that really matter and on factors that will be able to really affect the outcome of a game.